Best Practices and Safeguards
Supporting Our PWCS Students 2020-2021
Informed Consent for Student Support and Limits of Confidentiality
Remote formats mean that we need to provide students and parents with as much information as possible on confidentiality and about the limitations of the platforms you are using to communicate. Please place a statement about confidentiality (as well as a link) on your webpage; it would also be important to reference confidentiality and limitations of remote platforms in your regular correspondence with students and parents. Letting them know about this before you engage in school counseling interactions help us mitigate concerns about informed consent.
An example of such a statement might be the following:
PWCS school-based mental health professionals recognize that students and parents or guardians have a right to know the limits of confidentiality. Please click here to see PWCS Regulation 651-2 regarding information on the confidentiality of student-disclosed information.
A school-based mental health professional will discuss with you how the email or Zoom platform you are using for counseling and consultation works, as well as some best practices for using the platform.
When starting an individual or small group interaction, please display and utilize one of the official PWCS informed consent/confidentiality statement slides (below).
Documentation of Remote Student Support Interactions
This works the same way as it did in the past; make sure that any notes you may type are very brief and general in nature. Please document any phone or Zoom individual student support sessions or academic advisement in Synergy.
You do not need to document email contacts in Synergy, unless that is a practice in your department or school-based mental health team. It is advised for you to not delete emails, and to perhaps sort them into folders. This will allow you to recall the email contacts at a later time if necessary.
You do not need to submit a weekly or monthly calendar to the Office of Student Services. However, it is considered a best practice for you to use one to plan your time and record services you deliver (even pop ins to teachers' classroom Zoom meetings). Please keep a calendar for yourself (Outlook Calendar is a great format), and consider sharing it with your site administration.
Professionalism and Setting Boundaries
Work Hours
Your work/office hours should be clearly communicated to students and families. Now that so much has changed about the environment in which we work, we want to model and set boundaries for our school communities. Remember, you are not on-call 24/7, and you don't want to leave students and families with this impression.Professional Dress
Though we're all working from home, we have to be careful now that we are planning some video platform advisement and consultation. You don't have to be in your business best, but business casual attire...like on a "jeans Friday"...would be appropriate. It's important to be conscious of what we are projecting when we video conference with students and families. It's also important to communicate to students what the expectations are of them when you set up academic advisement. Again, we want to avoid putting anyone in compromising positions.
Liability and Ethics
For remote student support, it is important to adhere to the same we normally would for our respective professional organizations, but also to recognize and discuss with stakeholders the changes and limitations that remote formats bring.
It's important to know that private mental health providers are covered under HIPAA, and school-based mental health professionals and support specialists are covered under FERPA. Even if you are a school-based mental health professional who is also a private provider, it is FERPA that you must be compliant with when you are working in your capacity as an employee of Prince William County Schools.
To read more about FERPA compliance and virtual learning, click here to read guidance from the U.S. Department of Education.